Uropi is an International Auxiliary language created by Joel Landais. It is a synthesis of all the common points that can be found in Indo-European languages. Its main characteristics are simplicity, internationality and transparency

What Europe needs today is a quality revolution. After World War II, thanks to mass production, we were able to produce cheap food, labor-saving devices that everybody could buy. For the fisrt time in history, Europeans could not only eat well and sufficiently, but could also afford a lot of implements and appliances that made theirs lives easier and more pleasant: washing machines, refrigerators, cars, TV sets, vacuum cleaners, dishwashers… etc.At the same time a lot of people were employed in factories to manufacture all these goods and thus, there was practically no unemployment; those ‘producers’ also became consumers of the goods they made. Never in human history had living standards risen so much.That was the quantity revolution.

You can still observe it today when you see customers leaving supermarkets, with their trolleys brimming with food and other items, mass production is thriving: it is more profitable to produce cheap poor-quality articles in enormous quantities than much more expensive high-quality products in more limited quantities.

However the situation has changed. First because those cheap products are no longer manufactured in Europe, but in faraway countries, by an underpaid labour force, as in China or India, for example. As a consequence, many firms in Europe have closed down and the unemployment rate has been increasing steadily.

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Secondly because we are gradually becoming aware of the harmful effects of mass production. People no longer eat fresh vegetables and fruit from their gardens, but ready-made more or less artificial foodstuffs provided by the food-processing industry, which are full of chemicals, food-colorings, sugar and fat that make them obese and ruin their health. The number of cancers is constantly rising. Globalization makes us buy goods coming from all over the world, which builds up the volume of transport in gigantic proportions: the seas and oceans are criss-crossed by giant container ships and tankers and our roads are congested by innumerable trucks coming from all countries. For example, we import oranges from South Africa, Argentina and Uruguay, while there are fields of orange trees overladen with fruit in Laconia in Greece.

At the same time, we have to move further and further away to find a job, essentially in the large cities where you can no longer live because the price of rents and mortgages is far too high. As a result the air in those cities is so polluted by gasses and fine particles that it is almost impossible to breathe; many city-dwellers suffer from asthma and other respiratory diseases.

The situation of water is just as alarming: it is polluted by pesticides and chemical fertilizers that farmers pour out on their fields and which soak through the ground and penetrate into ground water. Besides this also exterminates a lot of birds and insects like butterflies and bees and threatens biodiversity.

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The carbon dioxyde released into the atmosphere by transport, industies and domestic heating also contributes to the climate change denounced by many scientists. International conferences on the climate are organized every now and then, such as the COP 21 in 2015 in Paris, but although good ideas are debated and good resolutions made, the concrete effects remain to be seen.

To top it all, this system leads to a mass production of refuse, above all plastic bags and packages which are indestructible and end up in the seas and oceans where they form floating islands. The fish eat those plastics and die, and those which escape are eaten by humans and give them serious diseases.The quantity revolution has turned into an apocalyptic nightmare.

Nicolas Hulot, the very popular French Minister of Ecology resigned in August 2018, confessing he was powerless to change things, later on in autumn several demonstrations against climate change took place in Paris. There is a gradual awareness and people have started to change their habits; unfortunately this is happening far too slowly and we haven’t got much time ahead of us.

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What we need is a quality revolution that could bring a drastic change to our way of life, as the quantity revolution did in 2 or 3 decades. It is of course a green, ecological and organic revolution, but it is also a revolution in people’s minds: phrases like ‘cheap’ and ‘buy a lot’ should be forgotten; every good thing, high quality product has its fair price. Of course this implies that everybody could afford to pay the price, and thus has a fairly well-paid job, or at least a sufficient income.

Producing locally as much as possible and eating seasonal fruits and vegetables will reduce the cost of transport and its pollution, but it also means consuming healthier food. Good food, eradicated pollution and a more natural life in general, will improve people’s health and reduce the number of diseases. This will also contribute to improving the functioning of hospitals and medical services which are saturated at the moment and do not work efficiently.

Apart from food, other high-quality items should also be manufactured locally; their quality will be guaranteed by Europe through the EQ (European Quality) label. We should no longer consume more, but consume less and consume better. However people would not have to pay more in the long run: better quality shoes, clothes, electrical appliances, mobile telephones… etc., would last longer, and wouldn’t have to be replaced so often, and thus we would reduce the amount of refuse.

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The best bank is the Earth. You put your seeds into it, and it makes them fructify gratis.

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Plastic packages should be banned for most products, except when they are absolutely necessary, and would be replaced by bottles, jars … etc. in recyclable glass.

Aided by European subsidies, agriculture will become organic, without any pesticides, chemical fertilizers, GMO’s… A real revolution !

The quality revolution is not against technology: we won’t go back to the cave age, heated by wood fires and lit by candles. Quite the contrary, we will need more technology to develop non-polluting energies: solar, wind, water energies… etc, and build well-insulated, positive energy houses, neighbouhoods, towns. Much more technology will be needed to solve the present problems and negative effects that natural energies have today and to reduce the exorbitant cost of positive energy buildings. Public transport and highly efficient electric cars will be developed.

But the quality revolution will not stop with pure air and water, healthy food… and natural energies; it will also change people’s way of thinking: we are now working in the short term, looking for immediate financial profits; we have to think in the long term: have a world vision for the future.

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Besides, since the quality revolution will be largely based on the work of associations which will play a key role, people will become more sociable again, less selfish, more solidary and fraternal. The consumer society has cut us off from each other: each one of us isolated, playing with his cell phone; now we will fight together against pollution and climate change and we will make all out efforts to give our contemporaries and our children a better life.

The quality revolution implies that all the above mentioned problems (pollution climate change, refuse, health… etc.) will not be handled separately by separate organizations, but dealt with as a whole by governements, international organisations, industrialists, farmers, associations, citizens, political parties and various movements, all Europeans working together.

Thanks to the quality revolution we will find human contacts, social links, participatory democracy and fraternity again. Of course the quality revolution would be useless and nonsensical if it was limited to a single country like France, Germany, Italy… it should at least take place on a European scale. In fact it doesn’t concern only Europe, but also China, America, India, Africa… the whole world. Yet we cannot wait for all countries in the world to agree, it would be a waste of time. If the quality revolution starts in Europe (we have the means to do so), Europe could serve as a model for the rest of the world - a lighthouse shining in the darkness, showing us the way.